How Does A Black Hole Effect Light

If the light has no mass, and therefore the weight, why can not escape the gravity of a black hole? Light is made up of particles called photons.

Photons are strange – they have no stationary mass. But photons do not stand still. In fact, they rush around us with the highest possible speed – 299792.458 km/s. Although without mass, photons have kinetic energy, the energy of motion. Because of this energy they are not immune to the force of gravity.

Albert Einstein discovered that mass can be converted into energy. The most obvious example is the nuclear bomb, which in a huge explosion of a small mass releases frighteningly large amount of energy. Since mass can be converted into energy, means that energy is a certain amount of mass.

It can be considered that for photons moving at high speed the entire mass is converted into kinetic energy. The mass of the black hole pulls photon down as if it has a mass that its energy represents.

Why light can not escape from a black hole

There are other, perhaps easier way to understand why light can not escape from a black hole. Einstein’s theory explains gravity as the curvature of space that surrounds the mass. What is the amount of matter in a point higher, the space around it is more curved. Therefore, the beam of light that is trying to leave a black hole can not get out – walls of “bowls” of space that surrounds black hole are too steep to “climb with them”.

Do massive bodies attract the light?

And the body with a mass less than that of black holes have a measurable gravitational effect on the light. British scientist Arthur Eddington proved in 1919 that Einstein was right when he claimed that massive bodies attract the light and change her direction. Eddington knew that was coming a total eclipse of the sun.

During the eclipse, the moon is between the earth and the sun, obscuring it in that way. When a solar flare is dark, can see other stars during the day. Edington and colleagues traveled to Africa, where is eclipse best seen.

Do black holes bend light? They found that the sun quite a bit bend brightness of distant stars when it passes close to its perimeter. This is to prove that the area around the mass of the sun slanted and that starlight bend when passing by the Sun as drawn by his gravity. You can see here Biggest Black Hole In The Universe!